'$213 per device': Prices for these products are expected to soar under Trump tariffs

28 November 2024

Critics of President-elect Donald Trump's proposal for aggressive new tariffs were hoping that he would back down or reconsider his idea. Instead, Trump is promising to enact new tariffs on his first day back in office, including across-the-board 25% tariffs on goods imported into the United States from Mexico and Canada. Tariffs on items imported from Mainland China would be pegged at 10%.

Vice President Kamala Harris, during her 2024 presidential campaign, repeatedly warned that the tariffs Trump was proposing would, in effect, be a major "sales tax on the American people" if enacted. And many economists, including Robert Reich and the New York Times' Paul Krugman, have been warning that Trump's tariffs would lead to brutal inflation.

Reich and Krugman are liberals. But on the right, the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank) has been equally critical of Trump's proposed tariffs.

CBS News reporter Megan Cerullo, in an article published on November 27, lists some of the many items that are likely to soar in price if Trump's new tariffs are enacted in 2025.

"For their part," Cerullo explains, "experts and business groups are clear that tariffs would lift prices. A barrage of new duties on foreign imports would likely boost consumer costs on everything from vacuum cleaners to tiki torches, which are largely imported from China and are already subject to tariffs, according to Scott Lincicome, a trade expert at the Cato Institute, a public policy research group."

Cerullo adds that Trump's new tariffs "would also reduce American consumers' spending power by $90 billion on products, including TVs, headphones, laptops and tablets, video game consoles, smartphones and other electronics, according to the Consumer Technology Association."

"The trade group — which modeled the impact of a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports, coupled with a 60 percent levy on goods from the country that Trump previously floated — estimated that laptops and tablets would see the steepest price hikes, with costs surging as much as 45 percent," Cerulla reports. "Video game consoles and smartphones could also see double-digit gains. Researchers assumed retailers would pass all added costs related to tariffs along to consumers."

Cerulla continues, "In the smartphone category, the average increase in price would be $213 per device, according to CTA."

Footwear, according to Cerulla, is also likely to soar in price if Trump's proposed tariffs are enacted.

Matt Priest, CEO of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America (FDRA), told CBS News, "We know that if they apply tariffs on Chines goods and Chinese footwear, it will hit working families the hardest."

Read Megan Cerulla's full report for CBS News at this link.

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